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​”I have witnessed more than my share of young men that have been sucked into the modern-day plantation. Young men that have been abandoned, forgotten, and alienated. Young men that have been discarded like the trash in our every day households.

I’ve witnessed the transformation of these young men from someone’s son, brother, grandson, father, or husband/boyfriend; to an animal!! What was once hope in their eyes turned to hate, and despair.

I’ve watched and witnessed the lives of young men drain from their eyes, and their soul when they were forced to adapt to this cruel, and violent lifestyle of the concrete jungle. I’ve watched and witnessed the lives of these young men be taken from them because the concrete jungle engulfed them and claimed their blood.

I’ve watched and witnessed these young men laugh to keep from crying for way too long.

But one thing I’ve yet to witness is, the mass majority of society see what I have witnessed!

Unfortunately, we are receiving word of yet another stabbing death at Elmore CF. Elmore has already had one stabbing death this month and another in the complex at Staton. As these deaths continue to pile up, ADOC officials focus their attention on dollars over life.

As the death toll continues to rise, there have been no fundamental changes to the culture of ADOC. Efforts to save lives must be expedited because, in the eyes of the ADOC, bodies are replaceable.

Monday, January 30, 2017
Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler (R) will present his alternative to solve Alabama’s prison overcrowding to the Prison Reform Committee Monday.
The committee meeting will be at 10:00 a.m. in room 325 of the State House.State Auditor Jim Zeigler is promoting his “Plan Z” as “a cheaper and faster way to alleviate current inmate overcrowding.” Alabama Governor Robert Bentley (R) for the second straight year is promoting an extreme proposal he is calling the Alabama Prison Transformation Initiative (APTI).

The Bentley Administration wants to borrow an incredible $800 million to build four mega-prisons and close 14 of Alabama’s existing prisons. Auditor Zeigler warned that the Bentley plan, “Would indebt the State for almost a billion dollars and still not solve the overcrowding problem.”Zeigler said that Alabama Department of Corrections commissioner Jeff Dunn said last weekthat the Bentley plans would raise inmate capacity from the current 13, 318 to 16,000. Zeigler said: “That is nowhere near the current population of 23,318 inmates. We incur almost a billion dollars of debt for the next 30 years but do not come close to solving the problem. Big borrowed cost – no solution.”

Zeigler said that his Plan Z would build a new women’s prison, refurbish the old Tutwiler women’s facility to a new men’s prison, reduce overtime paid by the prison by up to $18.9 million, and continue with criminal justice reforms that are already causing inmate reductions.

Zeigler said that his plan would only require a bond issue of $123 million, which Zeigler points out is far less than the APTI bond issue of $800 million. Zeigler said that $7 million of the annual savings by cutting overtime will pay for the bond issue with no burden on the General Fund or taxpayers.

Zeigler said, “Supporters of APTI are attempting to paint a picture that it is the only alternative to overcrowding and a potential federal takeover. APTIis NOT the only alternative. As a matter of fact APTI does not solve the overcrowding problem at all, by their own facts.”

Zeigler said, “Before the Legislative Session is over, Plan Z can be substantially improved by input from all concerned. This is a much better methodology than presenting the Legislature with a package dealand seeking their approval.”

Zeigler wrote that a Jan. 20, 2017 analysis by the Legislative Fiscal Office determined that Plan Z could decrease inmates to 18,727, dropping overcrowding to 132 percent of Federal guidelines. The figure of 135 percent is generally considered acceptable and is an appropriate target.

Gov. Bentley recently told the Alabama Media Group that borrowing the $800 million to build the four new mega prisons was his top legislative priority of the upcoming 2017 Legislative Sessions. Gov. Bentley had proposed the enormously expensive plan in 2016. The controversial plan was passed by the Alabama House of Representativesbut went down in the Alabama Senate.State Auditor Jim Zeigler has been a frequent critic of this and many other Bentley Administration proposals.

Zeigler has been mentioned as a possible 2018 Gubernatorial candidate. Bentley is term limited from serving another term. Many critics of the Bentley plan argue that a lame duck governor facing possible indictments and/or impeachment should not hamstring the next Governor with paying for prison debt run up by the previous administration.

When the trans-Atlantic slave trade began, Europe and her partners in crime declared war on Africa. When the Southern Confederacy ceded from the North, they declared a civil war to maintain the institution of slavery. After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment was ratified to maintain the institution of slavery under the control of the government. In other works, the institution of slavery was never abolished, instead, it was Nationalized and turned into an institution that would be controlled by the State, Federal and local governments.

Under the 13th Amendment, the criminal justice system and the courtroom would become the auction block. “Neither slavery or involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. . . ” Since that time, it has been the jails and prison systems that have served the functions of running the enterprise and institution of slavery in America. And, the complexity of the slave has not change: Black, Brown, and poor. The practice has not changed: free labor that exploits the oppressed and enriches the rulers of the system.

In 1878, just 13 years after ratification of the 13th Amendment, over 73% of the entire Alabama state budget was generated from prison labor and convict leasing. Now, in 2016, over 1.5 billion dollars per year is generated from Alabama prison labor in ACID industries, work release deductions ( up to 60% of wages can be taken), medical co-pays, filing fees, usury prices and kickback contracts from canteen, phone calls and more.

As fate would have it, the same Southern states that declared war on the North to preserve the institution of slavery in 1861, are now the same States that lead the Nation and world in incarceration rates. They have done this by declaring war on crime, war on poverty, war of this and war on that. Their last war is the “war on drugs.”

Well, it is time that the victims and intended targets of this war (the name of the war changes but the game hasn’t) — it is time that we declare war on mass incarceration, we declare war on prison slavery, and we declare war on the 13th Amendment.

Governor Bentley has recently proposed the construction of a new 1.5 billion (not 800 million) slave plantation. We must not sit by and accept this new above ground work-till-death camp and cemetary that will be used to continue to fund a government for the elite and rich, who choose to continue the institution and enterprise of Slavery in Alabama.

Adopt a prison or any other place of incarceration and a McDonald’s in your city/county/state, start organizing a Non-Violent and Peaceful protest n join the National Movement Against Mass Incarceration and Prison Slavery.

The NCTT-COR-SHU is geared up to launch a grassroots campaign, in conjunction with other human rights activists on the inside and outside to abolish the ‘legal’ slavery provision of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allows for the enslavement, involuntary servitude, and ‘civil death’ of prisoners, parolees and EVERYONE convicted of a crime in the U.S.

This provision is the civil basis for prisoners and ex-prisoner disenfranchisement, compulsory prison labor, ‘legal’ labor and housing discrimination for those segments of the population who most need fair access, disfavorable access to legal redress, a diminished standard of 1st Amendment and other essential constitutional protections, diminished access to educational, vocational, and higher learning opportunities, and most damaging to society as a whole – legitimizing the dehumanization of these citizens under the ‘law.’

The primary vehicle we will seek to employ this campaign nationally is the formation of the “Free California Movement,” in conjunction with prisoners across the state, while encouraging the formation and solidarity of other “Free… Movements” in every state in the Union. We recognize that each state’s prison system has its own unique contradictions (for example, in many southern states, prison labor is wholly uncompensated, while in California many prison jobs come with a pennies on the dollar slave wage, and other institutions have P.I.A. compensation for prison labor), but what is UNIVERSAL across the nation is all of the dehumanizing, discriminatory and inhumane statutes prisoners and former prisoners are subject to – be they prison regulations or penal codes- ALL flow from the ‘legal’ slavery provision of the 13th Amendment.

We will be reaching out to prisoners, activists, progressives, family members, friends and citizens from all walks of life in the coming months to support this vital effort which is key to positively resolving the malignant contradiction of rampant inequality and social alienation in American society. We hope we can count on your support looking forward.

The quagmire our Alabama Department of Corrections finds itself in has as its source the same cancer that has plagued this state since its inception. As with most structural injustices this, too, can be traced back to America’s sinful incestuous affair with race. It is disingenuous to speak comprehensively about the complications of the prison system in America, let alone Alabama, without speaking on the influence of race.

Consider seriously the debilitating effects of racist policies which create
overwhelming racial disparity such as disproportionate sentencing, whereby
blacks get a longer sentence for the same crime as compared to whites, racial
profiling, the ill-fought and wrongly aimed war on drugs, underfunded and
understaffed public defenders and schools in the inner city, and you will see
structural impediments which lay the foundation for the current horrifying
statistic that one in three black males will be incarcerated at some point in
their lives.

In 2013, the United Nations Human Rights Committee argued that,
“racial disparity pervades every stage of the United States criminal justice
system, from arrest to trial to sentencing.”

Critics argue the lack of supportive fathers is the culprit for all the troubles, which young black males suffer. Tell that to the parents of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin; both had loving and supportive fathers but were still seen as a menace to a sinfully racist society. Space would not allow me to give an exhaustive monologue on the depth of the historical events surrounding these issues. Suffice it to say, our prison problem began to manifest itself when nostalgic, white supremacist ideologues created incriminating laws such as the Black Codes immediately following slavery, which preyed upon the newly freed slaves. Even businesses profited off the backs of legally entrapped blacks.

Moreover, today according to author Michelle Alexander, the word “felon” is now
seen with the same angst as the word “negro” or “colored” did during the Jim
Crow era. It is extremely hard for former nonviolent inmates to find jobs, vote
and even get a student loan for college.

If people who committed crimes involving no moral turpitude have paid their debt to society why do we feel it efficacious to stigmatize and punish them for the rest of their lives? I am exuberant that God does not still label me based on past sins. For all those who come to Him in repentance, confessing their faults, and accept Him as their Lord and Savior, God welcomes. Hebrews 10:17 says, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”

Until we get honest about the source, it will do us no good to try to remedy the problem. Otherwise, we will only be treating symptoms and never cure the disease. Not talking about racism does not make it go away. Likewise, exposing a problem is not the same as creating one. People of faith need to stand up against injustice even if it is being done to the vilest among us. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Let us not just eradicate our prison overcrowdedness and staffing problems. Let’s get to the root and finally address the role of race in our criminal justice system.

If Jesus, a man of color, were in an Alabama prison today, would you care about the conditions, sentencing guidelines and societal stigmatization post-release then? Well, several of His servants are incarcerated, and we are called not to judge, but visit them. Always remembering what Jesus says in Mathew 25:36, “I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

MS Southern Belles

Come be a part of an Amazing Journey, help us bring empowerment to the incarcerated & their families: Mississippi Southern Belles, P.O. Box 442, Jackson, MS 39205, mississippisouthernbelles@gmail.com, (601) 345-1674

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National Prisoner Strike/Work Stoppage Sept 9 2016

Sept 9: National Prison Strike

S-To-P: Stop the school-to-prison Pipeline! Start with McDonald’s!

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